Allegations Against Staff and Volunteers

What is an allegation about a person's suitability?

A person's behaviour, at work or home or online, may cause concerns about their suitability to work or volunteer with children or young people.

An allegation or concern that any person who works or volunteers with children, in connection with their employment, (including supply staff) or voluntary activity may cover one or more of the following categories; They may have:

• Behaved in a way that has harmed a child, or may have harmed a child;
• Possibly committed a criminal offence against or related to a child;
• Behaved towards a child or children in a way that indicates he or she may pose a risk of harm to children; or
• Behaved or may have behaved in a way that indicates they may not be suitable to work with children. (The last bullet point includes behaviour that may have happened outside an organisation that might make an individual unsuitable to work with children, this is known as transferable risk).

What happens when an allegation is made?

When an allegation is made against anyone working or volunteering with children, the Allegations Against Staff, Carers and Volunteers procedure in the Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children Procedures must be followed. 

If there are concerns about allegations which fit the above criteria, the Manager should immediately complete the Derby and Derbyshire LADO form (located in the DDSCP documents library) and email securely to the email addresses below for the attention of LADO. The duty LADO will respond to written referrals:

Derby City to CPMduty@derby.gov.uk 

Derbyshire County to professional.allegations@derbyshire.gov.uk. 

The following resources have been developed to support agencies and their staff:

A DDSCP Briefing Note: low level concerns about staff has been published about concerns (including allegations) which do not meet the harm threshold, these are known as low level concerns.

Derby:

• Information for Managers and Employers: managing allegation of abuse against adults who work with children‌
• Information for individual staff or volunteers who are the subject of an allegation

Derbyshire:

• Derbyshire Managing Allegations leaflet

Managing allegations training for managers

The DDSCP training programme includes further details of multi-agency half day training on managing allegations. See Training course and events webpage.